There are a number of blogging tips Kenyan bloggers should know, even the most experienced ones. I have always been employing these tips and I believe they will help you too. The worst mistake you can make as a blogger is to assume that you know everything. In blogging, there is always something new to learn.
Here are important blogging tips you should learn:
- Best web hosting companies for Kenyan bloggers
Nobody will tell you which web hosting company is the best. At first, you use trial and error to pick what you believe is the best. But here we shall list the best companies that you should join to get the best services.
Best local web hosting companies
Kenya Website Experts(Select the company here)
HostPinnacle(Select the company here)
Garanntor Web Hosting(Choose company here)
Best international web hosting companies for medium and big websites
Local websites cannot handle more than 1 million page views per month. You will spend more on local dedicated server than what you can spend on international web hosting companies.
If your website receives more than 1 million visits per month, you better start hosting with the following hosting companies:
Bluehost(Click here to visit website)
A2 Hosting(Click here to visit website)
Kinsta—good for viral websites(Click here to visit website)
- Best place to buy WordPress Themes
The best place to buy WordPress Themes is ThemeForest.There are over 50,000 nice themes at ThemeForest.One of the most popular themes is Newspaper which has been purchased by thousands of bloggers. You can click here to see the list of themes available at ThemeForest
It’s always advisable to use a premium theme because it’s less vulnerable to malware attacks. Premium themes have several other features that free themes lack.
- Your blog will only grow if it has fresh, unique and original content
One blunder majority of bloggers make is to copy what others have already published. When you don’t have original content, your blog is highly unlikely to attract organic traffic. A perfect blog is one with original, fresh and unique content. When someone visits that blog, they will find a reason to visit it again and again.
It’s better to post just one original article per day than post 10 copied article which will return zero organic traffic.
- Google Traffic is better than Facebook traffic
You should always aspire to receive Google traffic. Your blog will only grow when it gets enough Google traffic (Google traffic should be more than 60% of the total traffic your blog receives). Traffic from Facebook and Twitter is called social media traffic and its quality is lower than that from Google. Traffic from Google, Yahoo, Bing and other search engines is called organic traffic. When you receive organic traffic, it means people are searching for content which you have posted before. You should always aspire to get organic traffic. In order to get more traffic, use SEO tools like SEMrush….you can register for free here
- Ensure that your website’s loading speed is high
Loading speed of a website should be less than 1 second except when there are several adverts and images. The lowest speed should be three 3 seconds. If you check the speed and realize that your blog takes more than 3 seconds to load, it means most of your readers are getting a raw deal. Most people searching for information online always prefer fast loading websites. In order for your site to load faster, you need to do the following:
- Reduce the number of adverts on pages and posts (you should not have more than 4 banners)
- Use optimized images. Each image should be less than 200kb.In your posts, you should not use more than 10 images—if possible, use three images only.
- Choose web hosting companies with the best servers. Some hosting companies have old servers which are slow.I have listed some of them above. If your blog gets more than 1 million visits, go for Kinsta Web hosting company
Loading speed affect the SEO of a website. It’s common that fast loading websites rank better than the slow ones.
- Never share content on Facebook pages you don’t own
There are bloggers who like sharing content on Facebook posts they don’t own, that’s not being professional and it’s against Facebook policies. If you do that repeatedly, Facebook will eventually ban your blog.
- Diversify your source of income
There are bloggers who depend on AdSense as the only source of income—what if your blog is banned?!!!It’s good to diversify, go for affiliate marketing, sponsored content and direct banners. But you can only do that when you produce quality content.
- Google Analytics is important
Google Analytics is an open source tool that’s provided by Google. This tool will help you to know the amount of traffic your blog receives and how your blog is performing over time. It’s important to sign up for the tool.
- Submit a sitemap for your blog
It’s also important to sign up for Google search console and also submit your blog’s sitemap. This will help your articles to be easily indexed by Google. You will also get alerts from Google when there is something wrong with your blog.
- Always have a backup website
Every experienced blogger has a backup blog. In case anything bad happens to the main blog, you’ll have the backup blog to turn to. For Kenyan blogger, it’s advisable to have one .co.ke blog and another one with .com extension.
A new blog takes at least 6 months to start getting good traffic
If your blog is new, don’t panic, it will take more than 6 months to start getting good traffic. Before 6 months are over, all other old blogs will be ranking better than you. If Google realizes that your articles are of high quality, it will start raking your articles better after six months are over.
- You should avoid adult and gambling on your site if you’re monetizing with AdSense
AdSense is very strict, it bans websites which are posting adult and gambling content. Sites like KahawaTungu,Mpasho,Daily Post Kenya and Ghafla were banned from AdSense because of adult content.